


a splintering, a seclusion.

by onlyeli



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Bonding, Crossover, Falling In Love, Hunt Gone Wrong, M/M, POV Dirk Strider, POV Second Person, The Magnus Archives Adjacent, Walks In The Woods, it's horror but it's not bc im bad at horror. all the scary stuff has happened already, listen. just trust me, lmaooo, man i hate tagging. idk bro dirk aligned w the spiral and jake w the hunt. trust me, or rather, you dont need to have listened to tma to read this im just stealing the concepts bc i enjoy them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-22 09:15:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22713706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlyeli/pseuds/onlyeli
Summary: There is a man in the woods, and he is not you.
Relationships: Jake English/Dirk Strider
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	a splintering, a seclusion.

**Author's Note:**

> eli?? writing sm she intends to have more than one chapter?? stop the presses.

There is a man in the woods.

For a second, you can’t tell if it’s your mind playing tricks or if it’s just another you -- there seem to be a lot of those wandering around lately. You come closer, slow on your aching feet and careful to steer clear of any snapping twigs, and it becomes very clear that this man is not you at all.

It’s a small relief. You rather like being the only you.

He’s shorter than you are, if only by an inch or so, and much stockier. His skin is shades darker and free of freckles, instead littered with small pockmark scars and dirt. The sight alone is enough to make the sparse hair on your arms stand up. The man has his back to you, his neck bent wickedly at the base as he peers up the trunk of a spindly tree. A birch, your mind supplies, rather unhelpfully. You stand in silence and watch as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out something that glints in the dappled sunlight, almost glowing green under the foliage. It’s a knife, about as thick as three of your fingers and twice as long. In one swift movement, he angles it sideways and drives the point beneath the bark of the tree. When he pulls, a strip of it comes away easily. The tree looks rather exposed without it. He doesn’t seem to mind.

While he flays the trunk, you come forward, noiseless and soft. When your footsteps stop making sound, you start to worry that you’re no longer the real you. “Hello,” you say, before panic can really set in.

The man turns around, brandishing his weapon. “Oh, fuck and blast, everything in these woods moves so frigging quietly! What do you want?”

He looks a little disappointed when you don’t react to the blade under your chin. You think you’d handled much scarier versions of this before the woods. The memory is hazy. Instead, you look at him, down your nose. You won’t be intimidated by a trespasser, much less one that barely makes it to your eyeline. “What are you doing.”

It distracts him, at least. He glances down at the streamers of birch bark slung over his arm as though he’d forgotten they were there. “Oh! Merely shucking some of the lovely dressings off of this here silver birch. She’s given it up rather sweetly, I must say, even if I do run the risk of implying she’s some round-heeled harlot. Even so, I’m sure we can keep that between us, eh?” He winks. The action is far more charming than you were expecting, and it makes you frown deeply.

“She’s a tree,” you say, because the last thing you want to deal with is more things in these woods that aren’t what they appear to be. You shake your head. “It. It’s a tree.”

He mirrors your frown, which makes you step back. If he’s really you, you want to be prepared to flee. “Cripes, nice to meet someone else up for fun and japes and such. Doesn't anyone around here have any imagination? It’s enough to give a man the bends.”

You want to tell him that ‘the bends’, more formally referred to as decompression sickness, is caused by the formation of gas bubbles that occur when scuba divers experience immense changes in pressure, not by a rather depressingly bland man-who-is-not-a-man in the woods, but you keep your mouth shut for two reasons; one, you do not know how you know that, and two, he is still talking.

“I can’t stick around for too long, lots to do I think and only so much daylight to do it in. I can't help but feel I'm actually sort of behind and that won't do, no siree bob. If you were wanting all of this for yourself you’ll have to agitate the gravel while you can and find another tree. It’s weird -- usually birches grow much closer together, but I haven’t found one of these beauties for a while.” He smiles, broad and far too genuine for a place like this, and pats the tree with affection that maybe only reads as strange to you. 

“Okay,” you say, still completely baffled by his presence. You’d stopped keeping track of your time in the woods some weeks ago (after a month, for sure -- too depressing) and the only faces you’d seen in that time had been your own, warped and twisted or maybe completely fine. 

The man is clearly unsatisfied with your answer, as he pockets his knife, harrumphs, and folds his arms.

“Well! Not one to bash ears, are you?” 

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Ha!” He slaps his knee, like you’ve told a fantastic joke. The sound makes you blink. “What's your name?”

Your mouth opens, noise collecting in the back of your throat. You’re going to tell him -- at least, you’re trying to tell him -- but there’s a hole in your mind where the information should be. It is not unlike when, on one of your first nights in the woods, you’d misjudged a step and gone tumbling into what you only recognised later was a pit trap. You just lose your footing and start spiraling, certain there should be knowledge where the dark space sits.

He looks at you expectantly, head cocked like a dog listening for a call. Or a fox listening for a rabbit. You swallow.

“Dirk.” It sounds almost exactly right. You smack your tongue against the roof of your mouth and taste sand. “I think my name is Dirk.”

“Well, Dirk,” he says, eyes bright behind thick, square glasses, “Pleasure to make your acquaintance. English. Jake English.”

He holds out a hand. You stare at his calloused palm dazedly. 

“Hold on,” you say, still reeling. His voice bounces mercilessly against the insides of your skull, echoing and layering over itself until it’s possibly one of the loudest things you’ve ever heard. You start to feel a little dizzy. “Did you just reference James fucking Bond?”

He laughs again, the sound pushed forcibly up through his chest and out of his mouth. There’s no mirth in the upturn of his lips. For a horrible second, you figure he’s already sick of you. The branches overhead press in a little tighter, snuffing out the few pinpricks of light. English Jake English doesn’t notice. 

“A quick study! But I’m sorry to say I must burn rubber, skedaddle as they say.” The cadence of his voice is strange. He talks too quickly, like he isn’t taking breaths where he needs to. You barely notice him securing the straps on his pack and turning on his heel to amble away until he has his back to you again and you’re already forgetting the colour of his eyes.

“Wait.” You’ve never been one to raise your voice, you know that much. When you reach out a hand, you’ve no intention of holding on, of sinking your fingers into his shirt and clinging, but his shoulders tighten in a wince as though he can feel your nails on his spine. 

“Yessir?” His voice -- Jake’s voice -- is chipper when he turns around, though the smile he bears his teeth in is wrong. You’ve spent enough time around things that are just not right to know that he is another unreality brought about by your wandering, your twisting and fragmented journey, but you can see now that his eyes are bright green, different to the hue of the leaves and the dying grass. His hair curls in odd ways around his ears, unlike how yours falls in thick, intrusive ringlets. His nose crinkles at the bridge even when he smiles in this snarling mockery and you have seen nothing like it in so long. You try to regain your dignity, protect your bruised pride. You take a step forward as he takes a step back.

“Where are you going.” Can I come too, you don’t say. He hears you loud and clear, though, and a weary slump leeches into his shoulders. It makes you cringe, but your expression stays still as the dead.

“Isn’t it obvious?” He isn’t angry, you try to rationalise. Just impatient, eager to get along. He’d implied he was on a deadline, after all. “I’m off on a hunt.”

**Author's Note:**

> *blows a kiss to jonny sims* you wrote the spiral and the hunt for me specifically. thank you. anyways feedback is appreciated etc etc i expect this to have around 5 chapters?? we shall see. tysm for reading!!


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